Three succesful facebook video marketing campaigns
Learning how to optimize your Facebook marketing strategy is one thing. Learning what kind of content would be appealing to your audience is another. But knowing these things in theory doesn’t guarantee a successful social video.
‘Emotional’, ‘relatable’, ‘funny’ – these are all vague terms. To know what video content resonates with an audience, you need to see the results for yourself. You need to study the social videos that have great engagement and see how they did it.
And this list is exactly the thing for it. Below are three successful Facebook video marketing examples:
1. Wix – Melt the Ice
Ever thought to yourself that there’s nothing more exciting than watching paint dry? Well, what about watching ice melt? No? Then how about watching ice melt and maybe winning big money when it does?
The “Melt the Ice” sweepstakes campaign ran from January 23 until the Super Bowl on February 5. The campaign involved a helmet inside a large block of ice and Facebook live streams of trying to get it out. When the helmet was free, they announced the winner of the sweepstakes. They gave out $10,000 every weekday until the Super Bowl, which was when they gave out $50,000. This was all done in anticipation of their Super Bowl ad, which has 5.5 million views today.
Why it was successful:
The Melt the Ice campaign encouraged heavy participation from the audience. To join the sweepstakes, you needed to change your profile picture to Chez Felix. To make the ice melt faster, Wix said they’d use torches if the audience commented “FIRE.” Or to hammer on the block after a certain number of shares. This created an active viewership and let the audience feel a sense of community and excitement. Who knew melting ice could be so entertaining?
2. Airbnb
“Travel more”, that’s what everyone promises themselves that they’d do. The allure of experiencing the world is familiar to everyone. That’s exactly why Airbnb’s campaign “We Are Here” was so successful.
As part of the Trips launch, Airbnb started a 24-hour Facebook Live focused on immersion. During launch day, they shot six films in six different cities and with a first-person POV. Viewers could then take part in various communities through these Hosted Experiences. The cities they included were: Paris, Miami, Cape Town, Tokyo, Seoul and Los Angeles. The idea was to remind people of the magic and real human connections that come with traveling. The campaign had 6 million participants.
Why it was successful:
The campaign resonated with the general yearning for travel and connection. Aside from that, the experience created a community that was encouraging and warm and real for its viewers. In one instance, the host asked the audience what their greatest fear was. The comments poured in. The organizers then wrote most of it down on paper butterflies to release to the wind.
3. Buzzfeed – Tasty
Buzzfeed’s offshoot brand, Tasty, was quick to capitalize on the rise of video content. Tasty releases its quick, mouth-watering recipe videos daily to its 90 million audience. And it’s not an empty number either. A new video from them can gain 1.9 million views and 9,418 shares after nine hours. A way to take note of their success is by typing in “Tasty” on Facebook’s search bar and counting its offshoots. There’s Tasty Vegetarian, Tasty Junior, Tasty Japan, Proper Tasty and more. All these separate pages have at least 2 million likes each.
Why it was successful:
Tasty had the privilege of being one of the pioneering brands to focus on social video content. It launched in July 2015, when 2016 was the year video content took center-stage. This plays a part in their success, but their content and their activity matter as well. Tasty entices views by choosing an image of the finished meal as video thumbnail.
Engage your audience. Understand and resonate with them. Be quick on the uptake while still releasing quality content. Those are the ingredients to success according to these three Facebook video marketing campaigns.